Understanding Call Pickup and Group Call Pickup

Cisco IP phones provide two call pickup types:

•Call pickup—Allows users to pick up incoming calls within their own group. Cisco CallManager automatically dials the appropriate call pickup group number when a user activates this feature from a Cisco IP phone.

•Group call pickup—Allows users to pick up incoming calls within their own group or in other groups. Users must dial the appropriate call pickup group number when activating this feature from a Cisco IP phone.

The same procedures apply for configuring both of these features. Group call pickup numbers apply to lines or directory numbers.

Using Call Pickup Features with Partitions to Restrict Access

You can restrict access to call pickup groups by assigning a partition to the call pickup group number. When this configuration is used, only the phones that have a calling search space that includes the partition with the call pickup group number can participate in that call pickup group. Make sure the combination of partition and group number is unique throughout the system.

•If call pickup group numbers are assigned to a partition, only those phones that can dial numbers in that partition can use the call pickup group.

•If partitions represent tenants in a multitenant configuration, make sure the pickup groups are assigned to the appropriate partition for each tenant.

A multitenant configuration provides an example of using partitions with call pickup groups. Assign the pickup groups to the appropriate partition for each tenant, and the group number will not be visible to other tenants.

Call Pickup Guidelines and Tips

The following guidelines and tips apply to using call pickup and group call pickup features:

•You do not need to reset phones to reflect changes related to call pickup groups, but you must update the database.

•Although different lines on a phone can be assigned to different call pickup groups, Cisco does not recommend this setup because it can be confusing to users.

Refer to the phone documentation for instructions on how users access call pickup features on their Cisco IP phone.

Updating Call Pickup Configurations

The following notes apply to updating call pickup configurations:

•When you delete a call pickup group number, you disable the call pickup feature for all directory numbers assigned to that group. To enable call pickup again for those directory numbers, you must reassign each number to a new call pickup group.